The recurrent
image into pre?conscious terrors -
To explore womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
- T. S. Elliot
Mouth to her Womb. Oomb, All wombing Tomb.
- James Joyce
One of the truths of Marlow's tale in The Heart of Darkness is that the frontier
is darkness, a wild untamed mystery, and our own prehistory under assault from
the lies of domestication and civility. In his view, this truth requires a lie
to be told to maintain and protect cultural authority and hegemony; this is
an old lie used to support the conquest of a new frontier, in the same way that
male power requires the lie of women's inferiority. A hint of this is the framing
of a tale of the Roman conquest of London, used to support Marlow's story of
economic conquest of the Congo region. Marlow's primary role as narrator is
to describe the dark light of another voice heard in his horror-filled landscape
that illuminates this lie within the truth. Some of the voices that are nearly
absent, except for token representation or 'framing', are those of feminine
characters. Their absence speaks volumes to those accustomed to hearing in this
silence an intentional marginalization; this firmly sets these women into a
category of one and two?dimensional symbols meant to evoke emotion or derision
rather than invoke believability or empathy. What little voice which is allowed
to pass through women's lips supports this observation and corroborates the
lies which maintain their marginalized state, or as Bette London posits in 'Reading
Race and Gender in Conrad's Dark Continent', for Marlow "women and lie are interchangeable."
These lies help to support the illusion of civility that domestication requires.
One of the lies Marlow sets up for us is "the idea of the "noble experiment";
yet another altar that we daily make sacrifice to, and which allows "the horror"
of colonization to be accepted by those safely ensconced between the butcher
and the policeman.
Marlow's aunt is the first woman seen in the text, even though she has the agency
to aid her nephew in getting his commission, it is represented as being at his
instigation. "The men said 'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then - would you
believe it? - I tried the women. I Charlie Marlow, set the women to work - to
get a job"(498:13-16). His description of her home is one of prim and proper
domestication, where one has "long quiet chats by the fireside" over a "decent
cup of tea" (503:30-31; 28). She represents the cultured woman of privilege
who although "living in the rush of all that humbug" was derided for being "quite
out of touch with truth" (504: 8?9; 15-16). The truth she is out of touch with
is that of experience, like Marlow's and Kurtz's, as opposed to the "rot let
loose in the press" (504:7).
The next women we meet are silent observers of the long stream of young men
seeking access to the trade company's work along that serpentine river leading
into the heart of darkness. Their silence is less representative of their powerlessness
though, for they can be easily placed in the role of the Fates, "knitting their
black wool feverishly" like the skein of the young men's fate whom they usher
through "the door of darkness" (501:17; 33). The thin one is seen "walking back
and forth introducing" not unlike Clotho spinning the yarn of fate, while the
old one "with a glance of unconcerned wisdom ... swift and indifferent placidity"
is reminiscent of Lachesis who measures out the length of that fate (501:29;
26). The obviousness of this connection to the Fates is found in the lines,
"She seemed to know all about them and about me, too ... She seemed uncanny
and fateful"(501:29-32). Atropis is not imaged in this scene, leading to conjecture
that thewilderness about to be encountered holds her sharp bite. "Ave!
Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she
looked at ever saw her again - not half, by a long way"(502:1-4).
These two models of the feminine can be seen in sharper light in the means by
which Marlow has gotten his commission. The previous Captain of his "two-penny-halfpenny
riverboat steamer', a Dane named Fresleven, was killed because of a perceived
economic slighting over two black hens. These hens are but a small aspect of
the story, although they are the agents that bring Marlow to Kurtz and into
the heart of darkness. The scene describing Fresleven's death illustrates what
often becomes of the activities of colonial powers among indigenous peoples,
for after the natives flee at the fear of "further calamities", never to return,
their homes are left to fall in to decay and rot. "What became of the hens ...
I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow"(499:28-29). The cause
of progress can only mean two things, domestication or death, the womb or the
tomb.
The woman, who like the two black hens whose importance in the overall story
is minimal, is significant in that she is the image of woman as the "noble experiment."
"Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped
and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber - almost
black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight
on the face was sinister' (523:13-17). This is blind justice bringing the light
of reason to the Dark Continent'. She is full of civility but capable of savagery
in order to impose culture on the heathen who live on the periphery of gentile
society. Like Athena, in the service of masculine authority, she is responsible
for civil society and the culture of arts and letters; she does not represent
the womb and tomb, but the sword and the quill, tools of conquest and economy.
She is therefore in opposition to the flesh and blood images of women we are
given and as such represents the ideal image of woman blameless for the fall
and bearer of civilization's gifts to the dark regions of the world.
This same imagery of womb and tomb, as seen in the women of Marlow's story,
is re-presented in the women of Kurtz's story, although here the imaging is
obvious. The first of these women could very well have been a personification
of Athena, before she was whitewashed and sexually denuded into a mouthpiece
for the patriarchy of Zeus and his brothers. "She walked with measured steps
... treading the earth proudly. She carried her head high ... there was something
ominous and stately in her deliberate progress"(577:27-29; 578; 3-4). Although
she is directly connected with "the immense wilderness, the colossal body of
the fecund and mysterious life" as if she were the" image of its own tenebrous
and passionate soul"(578:5?9) and consequently the womb from which life springs,
she is mute in Marlow's depiction of her. We are told she is capable of voice,
as she "talked like a fury" to Kurtz. Yet she is described to us as having a
"a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the
fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve"(578:12?14), as though she depended
on some signal from Kurtz to act. "Suddenly she opened her bared arms and through
them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch
the sky"(578:23-25) in mute pleading, caught between the desire for her people
and the "great man".
This same action will be seen towards the end of Marlow's interview with the
last woman of this story, Kurtz's Intended. She is imaged in contrast to the
Matriarch of the Wild, as dressed "all in black, with a pale head, floating
towards me"(598:17-18), she "seemed surrounded by an ashy halo"(598:28) reminiscent
of the idealized woman of Kurtz's painting. He connects Kurtz's death with her
sorrow as they shake hands, placing her firmly in the realm of the dead or the
tomb, as "she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time'
(599:1). Even though she has a voice, which we are allowed to hear, her words
constantly revolve about faith, fidelity, belief, love and the sorrow, which
these, due to Kurtz's death, have brought her. The impression is plain to see,
her life is now forfeit to that sorrow and she will remain nothing more than
a shade, devoted to the memory of her "great man". "She put out her arms as
if after a retreating figure, stretching them black and with clasped pale hands
... I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture
another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare
brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness"(602:6-7;
10-14). The stream of darkness, infernal and serpentine is yet one more manifestation
of the mute and co-opted feminine in this tale of horror, which suggests the
basis for this marginilization she and her kind suffer at these men's hands.
The horror is not what Kurtz sees, or what he has become participant to, but
the lies, which for Marlow have " a taint of death, a flavor of mortality ...
which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.
It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do"(526:17-21).
These lies he must ten, otherwise the truth would illuminate that very same
thing he connects them with, death, mortality, and the rot of an apple. This
shows him making a conscious choice between nightmares; the one that gives voice
to the horror, or the other, which helps to hide the horror and shield those
who live in fear and ignorance of its darkness. Bette London points out "In
the world of Marlow's desire, women and lies have no place; as agents of corruption
they must be kept out."
There are three lies, which Marlow suggests: two he voices and one he implies.
These lies are corollary to "the idea ? something you can set up, bow down before,
and offer a sacrifice to"(496:1?3), and for this reason it is what Marlow wants
to forget, what many want to forget. The first lie is in relation to the Matriarch
of the Wild who represents the womb, the mystery of life, that which has been
set up or manifest from the beginning and has been consequently held to blame
for the darkness. "They live in a world of their own, and there had never been
anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they
were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset"(504:16-20).
The second he is the most obvious as it is given at the end of the interview
with the Intended and relates Kurtz's final words, according to Marlow. This
lie signifies the polite world of domestication, which we daily bow down to
so as to maintain the social order nestled between the butcher and the policeman.
"We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets
worse"(558:31-33). These two lies help to illustrate the final lie, unspoken
but implied in the words, "Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly
with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing
over"(504:20-22). It is the lie of history, sacrifices heaped upon the altar
of colonization and conquest or as Bette London succinctly suggests "the lies
that support cultural authority ... they function to expose the fables of identity
which the voice of cultural authority has achieved."
Conrad has been seen as a sexist and a racist because of these lies of Marlow's.
He like Marlow is caught in the web of deceit; this nightmare that is civilized
society. Theirs is a place where appearances are more important to maintain
than truth, for the truth would cast a sinister glow upon the face of their
actions and ideas. He and Marlow are products of their culture and its long
sordid history. The inconsistencies in their depiction of reality are informed
by their acculturation. To turn to Bette London again, "ideology determines
not only what an observer writes, but what a first-hand observer sees." Consciously
or unconsciously the depiction of women in The Heart of Darkness show
the greater fear that men harbor in their own hearts of darkness, that their
idea or "noble experiment" is based on "unsound practices" and faulty reasoning.
Marlow and consequently Conrad's choice to paint women as the cause of, and
reason for, the lie that continues to be told in order to maintain cultural
authority and consequently the worship of the idea of colonization is an old
lie masquerading as apology. This is doubly ironic in that Marlow is represented
in the final scene as a Buddha giving voice to the truth within his lie to those
who are responsible for the horror of the killing grove tomb. And as yet another
male demagogue preaching detachment from desires and the inherent darkness of
the wombanly world, while reaping (sic raping) the benefits of the patriarchal
culture of power and authority over the same.